1. Thinking Of You<br />Setting (Time & Place): Winchelsea Beach, Rye, <br />20th November 1928 or 1944 (date subject to change)<br />1928 context: Based on a true story…on 15th November 1928, 17 Lifeguards received a call for help off the coast of Rye. Launching the boat from the Mary Stanford Lifeboat house, they took into the rough seas. The boat never returned. Over the following days the bodies of the brave men washed up on shore. The lifeboat house was never used again. Thinking Of You takes place five days after the tragedy. Eliza takes her child to the shore to say finally goodbye to her husband and seek the strength to move on.<br />1944 context: World War Two. Eliza has received the dreaded telegram that reports her Navy officer husband has been killed at sea. <br />Genre: Drama<br />Synopsis: <br />A young woman stirs in her sleep. The sun is streaming in through the netting draped windows. The sound of the ocean can be heard in the distance. Sudden flashes of rough seas and men crying derive her out of her dreams, startled. She reaches over to where the other half of the bed is empty and scrunches the vacant sheet in her palm. The wall clock ticks mundanely. <br />Wrapping a silk gown around her she drags herself out of the bed and sits down at a dressing table where a crucifix necklace hangs. She gently removes it from the mirror and places it around her neck. She gazes at the photo of a man which lies on the wooden surface and proceeds to remove a letter from an envelope which reads “killed in action”. <br />Dressed in black she walks through the fields towards the beach, her child trailing behind her, picking flowers.<br />She walks down to the shore. The sea is rough and overhead, the sky is cloudy and dark. Behind her stands the lifeboat house, the structure that launched the boat that her husband was onboard five days prior. She takes a flower out of the bouquet and plucks each petal, dropping them into the waves. She looks down the beach to see a mirage of her and him running across the sand and laughing. Her child, who has brought its toy boat, places it into the water and they both watch it drift out to sea. She kisses the top of its head and walks toward the lifeboat house. There, she places her flowers and a note “thinking of you”.<br />Walking back across the fields, a gust of wind rushes across the landscape, blowing petals of a nearby bed of poppies past the mothers face. She turns her head and looks back towards the wooden building to see a young man waving at her. She smiles, a tear falling down her face and blows a kiss back to him. <br /> <br />